Possibilities for spiritualism outside Platonism

My intuition is that Xtianity and neo-Platonism are outcroppings of the same general trait. I tend to side with Hume and others on a more physical interpretation, because that is all we really know so why not start there?

Does anybody here consider themselves to be spiritual, and if so, can they define it? I would be interested in hearing some non-Platonic ideas if available.

Right but you still need a material-to-spiritual framework. Reinventing the wheel is unnecessary. The Neoplatonic one was the most sophisticated before it was smashed down in the original crowdism called Dark Ages. What this means is the sacred was turned from esoteric mysteries in exclusive priesthoods to exoteric mass religion and further ruined later with universal literacy and handing out bibles for every dunce to interpret for itself. Thus the Divine, or our connection to it, was swamped under progressivist equality crapflood thereafter.

So the real problem is the loss of our connection to the sacred which is something revealed only through a dedicated, exclusive priesthood inner circle to the rest of us obedient dilettantes attending festival days and rites as part of our larger cultural framework. Lack of a material and provable basis are, respectively, not necessarily true and impossible (regress of reasons).

There is an invisible world that connects the visible world. These are not separate, but integral. The world we live in now is also a spiritual world even though we may not be conscious of it. Individualism and materialism isolate our minds from it while a spiritual person attempts to reconnect.

Scourge: You are assuming an efficiency of filtering, with your vote being cast toward the lesser rather than the more disperse. In this I disagree with your position, as I tend to side with nature's meanderings.

However, I do feel strongly that it take a certain kind of person to truly reach beyond and have a vision for humanity, and that this is difficult or impossible for somebody "in the flow" of materialistic society. I would love to know what principles/goals/etc you consider important or desireable so that this conversation can continue.

Ianfunumond: I also agree that a monism is probably the correct interpretation. This is my main concern: what are we to suppose as spiritual if most values taught in the arcane schools are outcroppings of group cohesion? An outcropping of an outcropping is still an outcropping. Thus are all values dependent on survival? If so, how transcendent could they be?

Crow: Politics, yes, we all should vote, even if the ballot is blank. I do agree that spiritualism starts where the self ends. But is this to something higher than reality itself, or just the self [aka overlaid group values]?

Thanks for the comments. I'm not being Socratic, although it may seem that way, this is just how I play with ideas. Feel free to ask me questions and I shall answer in declarative sentences.

Phoenix

I don't know Plato, I forget everything I learned about his theories except for the fact that I strongly disagree with his theories. I should brush up on it, just for the sake of having proper discourse (know your enemy), but in the meantime...

Alan Watts says that Zen is not thinking about God while peeling potatoes, Zen is just peeling potatoes..

The astral planes are comprised of matter, just more subtle matter than we're used to in our physical Earthly existence. To say that something is comprised of no matter at all, is to me, of no importance (matter) at all...

spiritual to material to voidcoherence to diffusion to voidorder to chaos to nothingness

In antiquity, the prime elements would have been fire, earth, water, wind. In other words, some combination of these were thought to be the building blocks for matter. They were crudest of reduced forms, neighboring the nothingness itself. Let's swap the prime elements out for nanoscale matter, the molecular, and further reduced, quanta. At this scale, the rules of matter compared with the macro scale we are accustomed to observing, change. At the quantum scale particularly, diffusion/distance away from The One/Truth/God is almost complete, so unpredictability and chaos begin to take the place of order.

Phoenix

At the quantum scale particularly, diffusion/distance away from The One/Truth/God is almost complete, so unpredictability and chaos begin to take the place of order.

So you're saying the thread of order at the quantum scale is very subtle? Still, the 'chaos' would have to be subservient to it; order is only truly order if there's stuff to be ordered in the first place.

Okay, how about the other side of the gradient. Closer to spirit and further from matter we have the informational which governs the operation and coherence of matter. It isn't so much that two and two is four, but that two and two cannot be other than four as a simple example. We also do not see the ultimate source for all these informational absolutes which we might name Truth with the capital T.

So again, we're fairly keeping with the Neoplatonic viewpoint but making some adjustments for contemporary findings.

That's interesting, as a way of looking at things. I make no distinction between 'soul' and 'spirit', and see both as 'potential', which may also be considered as an electrical phenomenon. Before becoming electrical, in the sense of the potential to become it. Potential is the best way I have found to translate the reality into words.

There is a background organizing structure to this potential, which fits perfectly, to organize all potential, into patterns of structure. Patterns exist, everywhere, both inside and outside the physical body. That is what space is: context for the structure of potential.

Blah blah blah...

Somebody is going to have to invent some better way of communicating than by the use of words.

Based on the replies, I may be able to respond to Scourge and Crow with one post.

The core assumption in both of your positions is that there is a real and external informational order permiating and playing with reality as we know it. From this can spawn any number of "higher pursuits" such as politics/religion/etc, but I hesitate to pursue them because of the assumption upon which they are built. I find it completely plausible that patterns exist, but I also find it highly plausible that our minds seek and create patterns, so determining from whence came this information is highly suspect. In keeping with comtemporary findings there has been progress in the field of "embodied mathematics", namely, that our physicalness is responsible for these immortal truths we seem to discover. If true, this has the effect of showing us clearly the fence between knowledge and assumption, as well as giving us a framework for fertile pursuits.

In short, informational arguments appear to be home-runs, but in the worst case scenario they have merely sunk to highly plausible.

Back to the spiritual aspect, the life worth living. Jung believed that the highest goal of the individual was to fully harmonize one's idiosyncracies with the needs of the contemporary culture. Sadly we see this all too often, and I hardly consider it to be fulfilling. But to absorb the culture's goals as own can be a good choice as well. Sadly we all here agree that in general this option seems bleak. Shall we soldier on by hook or crook, or shall we merely gather experience and resources to ourselves so that if time of need presents itself we can act? Or is there a better goal?